


The Hardest Part is Finding the Name

by weasleytook



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Humor, Superheroes, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2011-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weasleytook/pseuds/weasleytook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penny dies but wakes up alive. That's not normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hardest Part is Finding the Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marksykins](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=marksykins).



> A Saturnalia gift for marksykins who requested Penny having something comic book-y happen to her.
> 
> Special thanks to ishie for the wonderful beta work! :)

So as it turned out, dying wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t as painful as she expected anyway.

She tried one last time to sit up but her body wouldn’t move, and when she cried out for help, her voice was too quiet for anyone to hear it.

Penny expected her life to do that flashy thing in front of her eyes while the life drained out of her but it didn’t happen that way. Instead she thought about what everyone would say at her funeral. Leonard would cry, Howard would say that it’s a waste of a hot girl to die this young and Raj – he might even talk to her – the dead version of her anyway, but it was something.

Then there’s Sheldon. If she had the strength to laugh she would have. Sheldon might begrudgingly admit to missing her, but he would be too busy saying how this all could have been avoided if she had just allowed him to clean her apartment once a week as he requested.

So what, her apartment was messy. So what, she tripped over a shoe and cracked her skull on the kitchen counter. So what, she probably broke her neck too. Big deal. We all have to die someday.

Penny shut her eyes, sick of watching the blood puddle underneath her head as she lay there motionless.

 _This whole death thing is taking way too fucking long_ , was her last thought as she felt the darkness finally consume her.

*

When her eyes opened again, she felt cold, but also very much alive. There was a dull pounding in her head and her bones seemed to creak as she attempted to move, but other than that, she actually felt pretty awesome.

Penny sat up slowly and looked at the now dry puddle of blood where her head had been. “What the hell…”

She put her fingers to her head and felt dry blood and matted hair but no open wound. Penny stood up but couldn’t believe how healthy she felt despite sleeping for hours on her kitchen floor in a pool of blood.

Penny was so caught up in her confusion that she didn’t even hear Sheldon’s knocks until he was already on the second set of them.

“Oh. Oh shit. Fuck. Shit shit shit.”

Penny had a bad habit of always answering the door for Sheldon, but she wasn’t really in the mood to explain why both she and the floor are covered in blood. Not that she could even begin to explain it if she wanted to.

“Penny, I know you’re home. I can hear you.”

Damnit. She stopped and stood as still as possible, knowing that even a small movement might give her away.

He called through the door again, “I’m also aware of your schedule and that today is your day off. You might as well answer the door.”

Penny closed her eyes and waited for what felt like an incredibly long time. Long enough for Sheldon to give up and go back to his own apartment.

But then her cellphone started ringing. Loudly. And she suddenly rued the day she decided that a very loud Black Eyed Peas song made for a great ringtone.

“I have never seen you go anywhere without your phone, therefore you must be in there. Now please answer the door.”

“Okay, fine, you caught me! Just give me one minute, please…”

Penny looked around frantically for her Cornhuskers ballcap and pulled her hair up underneath, hoping to hide the parts that had been matted with blood. She went to the door and opened it only far enough that Sheldon wouldn’t take it as invitation to come inside. Penny even made sure to brace her arm against the door jamb to block him.

“What’s up, Sheldon?”

“Why are you wearing the same clothes you were wearing last night? No, wait, I’m sure I already know. I’ve heard Howard refer to it as the walk of shame.”

“No, Sheldon, no. I’ve been here all night, I just -”

Sheldon tried to look over her head and she attempted to combat his curiosity by standing on her tiptoes to block his view. This was one of those times she wished he was shorter.

“Is that blood on your floor or has your propensity to be messy increased even further this month?”

Penny sighed loudly and looked at the floor beneath her bare feet while she considered it. The one person she knew could help her figure out was going on just happened to be standing outside her door. So she sighed again and stepped back to let him in, making sure to shut the door tightly.

Sheldon looked at the puddle of blood again and then back to Penny who was just taking off her hat.

“Since you noticed and since you might be able to help me, I might as well show you…”

She was surprised with how much concern she saw in his expression as she stepped closer to him. “Are you hurt? That seems like a significant amount of blood. How –“

“How am I standing?” Sheldon nodded and she continued, “I – I don’t actually know. I fell last night and hit my head on the counter. I think – I think I broke my neck too.”

“But – how is that possible? Aside from all the blood, you look perfectly healthy.”

“I know. I feel great actually. I think I’m kind of invincible. Or immortal. Something like that. I’m was totally sure I was dead and then…”

“Hmm.”

Penny took another step towards him and narrowed her eyes. “Hmm? I tell you I may be invincible and all you can say is ‘hmm’.”

Sheldon kept looking around the apartment and nodding before finally looking back at her. “Before we determine your exact condition, we’ll have to do more research. And testing, of course. We can’t say with complete certainty that you’ve suddenly developed a superpower until we have more information. That would be absurd.”

“Oh.”

Sheldon sure had a different definition of what was absurd than she did. He moved towards her and reached out a hand to the spot on her head where she had injured herself. Penny flinched, not out of pain or nervousness, but because Sheldon was actually okay with touching another human being. For _research_ , of course.

“I should probably be wearing gloves for this.”

“You’re not going to catch anything.”

Sheldon responded with a derisive laugh but continued moving strands of hair aside to investigate. “That is definitely strange.”

“What? What do you see?”

“Nothing. A fall like that would surely leave a cut or bruise, but there’s nothing.”

Penny took a step backwards and frowned at him. “Nothing? At all?”

Sheldon shook his head and seemed to be inspecting her from head to toe. “Nothing. Whatever gash caused all of that bleeding has healed itself.”

“Whoa.”

“This will definitely require more research. I’m going to go get my computer and tell Leonard –“

“That you’re helping me with some tech support and you don’t want to be bothered. I think this should stay a secret between just you and me for now.”

It was bad enough she was going to have Sheldon treating her like a guinea pig, she didn’t need Leonard, Howard and Raj doing it too.

“I understand. You know that I am not adept at keeping secrets, but I will do my best.”

“Thank you. And I will…” She looked at herself, still in her clothes from last night and still covered in blood. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

*

Sheldon was already on her couch with his laptop on the table in front of him. She could smell a hint of pine as she walked out of the bedroom and looked to where the blood stain used to be.

“You had time to clean my floor while I was showering?”

“You didn’t think I was just going to leave it like that, did you?”

She didn’t know why she was surprised.

Penny sat on the couch next to Sheldon and put her bare feet up on the table. He gave her a brief look of disgust but quickly turned back to his computer screen.

“We need to establish a few important facts before we can figure out how to proceed from here.”

She guessed he was using ‘we’ just to be nice since it was just him who was going to be doing all the figuring and proceeding.

Sheldon picked a pin up from the table and turned to her, forcing Penny to back away in fear. “What the hell are you going to do?”

“I need to stab you with this pin.”

“How about no?”

Sheldon gave her an exasperated sigh. It would be the first of many to come. “I only need to stab far enough to draw blood. You probably won’t feel a thing.”

Penny frowned and Sheldon continued, “Trust me?”

She did trust him. That’s why he was here. “Yes, I trust you.”

That’s when he did something else she didn’t expect. He wrapped his hand around her wrist and lifted her hand up to eye level, firmly but not forcefully. Penny thought about trying to wiggle free but Sheldon was too fast and quickly stabbed the pin through her palm.

“Ow!”

“Did that hurt?”

“Well… no.”

Sheldon examined her hand closely as he spoke, “Then why did you say that?”

Penny tried to see what he was looking at but his giant head was in her way. “I don’t know. It was instinct I guess.”

He let go of her hand and locked eyes with her. “Not a mark on you. It healed instantly.”

“So?”

“We move on to bigger things.”

“No. We don’t.”

*

“Okay, I’ll admit it. This is pretty cool.”

“Penny, you are remarkable.”

Penny grinned as she wiped the tiny droplets of blood from her hand with the towel. “I know, right?”

He had convinced her to move on to bigger experiments than just a pin and she had now moved on to slicing the palm of her hand with a butcher knife. It was creepy as hell, but every single time the cut closed up as quickly as it had taken for her to slice it.

“Well, now that we can be sure you’ve developed some sort of accelerated healing factor, we need to figure out how you obtained this power and what the extent of it is.”

“I _died_. That’s pretty extensive.”

“Are you sure you actually would have died from that fall?”

Penny didn’t like the look on his face at all. “Sheldon, do not get any weird ideas about me throwing myself in front of a train just to test a theory.”

“Hypothesis.”

“Whatever. I’m not doing it. I died once already this week.”

His eyebrows raised and she pointed her index finger at him to silence him. “That doesn’t mean I’m doing it next week either.”

Sheldon turned back to his laptop with a loud sigh. Of course _he_ was disappointed, but he wasn’t the one who putting his life at risk for a science project.

“I would never allow you to cause damage to a train. But if you’re willing to jump off the roof…”

“No.”

*

“So, there I was, in the bathtub this morning and then, all of a sudden - WHOOSH!”

Sheldon was sitting at a microscope and swiveled in his chair to give her a confused look, “Whoosh? The number of things that could possibly mean are innumerable.”

Penny jumped up and sat on the tabletop just inches from a microscope that cost more than the yearly salary of everyone in their apartment building combined. Sheldon blanched and she ignored it, pointing out the perfectly smooth patch of skin on her leg.

“Cut myself shaving and then… WHOOSH. Healed up like that.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize the last word and Sheldon just sighed loudly before turning back to the microscope.

“I’m not sure why you’re surprised. This has been happening to you for the past 36 hours already.”

“I’m not surprised. I just think it’s cool. I can’t even feel the pain. No more cuts while shaving, no more burning myself on the stove or papercuts. I bet I never have to wear sunscreen ever again.”

“I see you’re really looking at the big picture.”

Sheldon continued staring in to the microscope, examining Penny’s cells as he scribbled in a notebook in his lap. Sometimes she wished they had never encouraged him to learn sarcasm.

“Hey, we still don’t know what caused this or what it is exactly. I’m just enjoying the benefits.”

“Penny, your cells seem to be repairing themselves at a rate unlike anything in known science. You’ve completely changed on the cellular level and no matter what outside element I introduce into these samples, the cells remain whole and healthy.”

“Huh?”

“I believe that’s what you would call ‘cool’.”

*

The next day Sheldon arrived at her apartment as soon as she got home from work with his laptop in hand. Never had she thought she could apply the word giddy to one of Sheldon’s moods, but he looked so happy that she wondered if Stuart had announced that every day was free comic book day for him.

“Sheldon… you look… happy?” She had wanted to say ‘weird’, but went with the more complimentary descriptor instead.

“Oh. I am. I have been working all morning on your special condition and –“

“My special condition? That makes it sound like a sexually transmitted disease.”

He shut the door behind him and his face went from giddy to completely perplexed. “I’m fairly certain you didn’t obtain your power through –“

She put a hand up to stop him and smiled. “I’m kidding. Just sit down and tell me what you found out.”

He did as instructed and opened his laptop, quickly bringing up one of his famous PowerPoint presentations. Penny sat beside him and frowned, “PowerPoint again? Really?”

“Yes. It’s a three-part presentation. Your walls aren’t appropriate for projection so you’ll just have to follow along on the laptop.”

“Oh. Of course.”

Sheldon cleared his throat and she watched the first slide come up while trying to stifle a laugh. Super powers were serious business, obviously.

“Section the first – invincibility & immortality.”

“I’m immortal?”

“No. Not necessarily. You are invincible and therefore cannot be killed by accident or murder. Even if you were to be dismembered into several pieces, we could put you back together eventually.”

Penny shuddered and silently hoped there wasn’t a visual representation of that on the next slide. She is clearly relieved when the next slide has more text and what looks like diagrams of cells. She zoned out at the techno babble for a moment but perks back up when he mentions immortality again.

“From what I’ve gathered, you are not immortal. You will still age, but because of your advanced healing factor, you will most likely age much slower than a normal person. You could live for two or three hundred years.”

She’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but for now, she’ll stick with it still being pretty cool.

“Of course, you could be killed by a mystical blade that nullifies superpowers or by a metal called carbonadium.”

“Comic book thing?”

“Yes. I was just attempting to inject some humor into the presentation. I’ve been told my lectures can be rather dry.”

Penny laughed softly before quipping, “I can’t imagine why anyone would say that.”

Sheldon nodded in agreement. “Neither can I. Now, on to part two, how did you obtain these powers? There are several ways one can end up with superpowers as you can see by the list on the screen. We can rule out mechanical as you are not in possession of a suit that makes you invincible. We can also rule out mystical, extra-terrestrial and religious.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You haven’t cast any spells to give yourself a power, you don’t hail from an alien planet, nor are you a goddess imbued with powers.”

“How do you know? Maybe I am…”

Sheldon completely ignored her but she could see him tighten his jaw. He was taking this far more serious than she was. “That leaves us with science or mutation.”

“Science? Like a lab accident or radioactive spider bite or –“

“Radiation, exposure to nuclear matter, and so on. None of this happened to you in the hours leading up to the first time your power was used, correct?”

Penny stopped to think about the day leading up to her fall in the kitchen and it was as mundane as the twenty-four years that came before it. “The nachos I got from Del Taco were pretty toxic, but nothing nuclear, no.”

“I see you’ve decided to go with the wisecracking superhero archetype rather than the dark and brooding archetype.”

Penny grinned widely and poked him in the shoulder with her index finger. “I guess that makes you my loyal sidekick.”

“You’re a mutant.”

Her grin faded to a frown as soon as he said it, “Well, that’s no way – oh wait – I see.”

“You’re an example of an evolving species. A mutation that has probably always been there but didn’t become active until you needed it.”

“Does that mean they can go away too?”

“Unlikely. But my research is only partially based in science, the rest of it comes from a lifetime of reading X-Men comics.”

Penny slouched down on the couch with a sigh. Telling Sheldon her secret had either been her worst idea or her best one. The jury was definitely still out.

*

It turned out that the third part of Sheldon’s presentation had been on further testing her to see if she had other powers. It was a phrase that made Penny stand up from her couch, point at the door and tell him to get the hell out.

She relented, of course, like she usually did. Sheldon treated it like a science experiment but he never forced her in to anything she didn’t want to do. He actually was remembering to treat her like a human, or at least a mutated human, instead of a lab rat.

In just around a month they had found out that her mutation had also given her a few other benefits. She was stronger, faster and a lot more agile than ever before. Though apparently the agility thing kicked in after she tripped over a shoe and killed herself in her kitchen that first night. None of those new abilities were _super_ , but that combined with a faster metabolism meant she never had to go the gym again. That was a victory in her book.

“So are you ever going to let me tell anyone about what you can do?”

She was enjoying the cool spring breeze hitting her face, lost in her own thoughts, but Sheldon’s question pulled her right back to earth. “Maybe. Someday. But – I like having this as our secret for now. Just you and me.”

Penny looked over her shoulder towards him and smiled slightly. They had been spending a lot of time together. So much time that the others were beginning to suspect that there was something weird going on.

“Raj thinks we’re secretly engaging in –“

“Let him think that for all I care. For now, anyway. Besides, it’s less absurd than what’s really going on.”

“Is it?”

She turned all the way around and stepped towards him with a laugh. “Only by the tiniest of margins.”

Penny looked down at her feet and suddenly felt really small. The last time her palms had felt this sweaty was the day she told her parents she was moving to California. But she had trusted Sheldon up to this point, and there was no reason to stop now.

“Sheldon, if this doesn’t work, then I need you –“

“It will work.”

She closed her mouth and smiled again. Sheldon was confident and he never faked confidence either. That was reassuring.

“So… Front or back?”

“Front means the street and that’s too much attention. Back is the alley, far less sanitary and a chance you’ll fall in to the dumpsters.”

Penny smacked him on the arm playfully and took a deep breath in. “I promise I’ll take a shower right after I jump off this roof.”

She walked past him and though she didn’t look back she knew he was watching her closely. Penny wondered if there was an appropriate thing to say as you were about to hurl yourself off of a roof – _Geronimo? Cowabunga? Tally ho?_

Penny muttered something entirely different under her breath just as her feet lifted from the ledge.

“Oh, fuck.”

*

An hour later and Penny was freshly showered and sitting next to Sheldon on her couch. She had landed in a rather disgusting puddle of _God-knows-what_ , but she hadn’t felt any pain and it only took a couple seconds for her to stand up and wave at Sheldon who was watching from the ledge.

Sheldon had been staring at her since she sat down and if it had been other guy but him, she would have called it leering.

“So, Sheldon, I’ve been thinking…”

“Hmm.”

He was looking at her knees and Penny snapped her fingers in front of his face to get him to stop. His head snapped up so that his eyes finally met hers and she continued, “Anyway, I was thinking if this is a genetic mutation like you said, and it’s been with me since birth but dormant, then… what are the odds that there are people out there just like me? Or with other powers?”

“Well, if you take the number of –“

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said odds.” The last thing she wanted was more of Sheldon’s calculations. “I’m just saying, it’s possible, right?”

“I would say it’s highly likely.”

She let the words sink in for a moment and wondered how she would even go about finding others like her. It wasn’t as if she was sharing her secret with the world, and neither were they.

“So if you could pick your own super power, what would you want? Telepathy, maybe?”

“Yes, because my fondest wish in life is to be privy to things like the private thoughts of Howard Wolowitz or to the barrage of Lady Gaga lyrics that must go through your head on an hourly basis.”

Penny rolled her eyes and asked, “How do you even know who Lady Gaga is?”

He looked visibly annoyed and Penny remembered before he even answered her, “Because you added that insipid song about riding a disco stick, whatever that’s supposed to mean, to my iPod but labeled it as one of my favorite Richard Feynman lectures to trick me.”

Her laugh at this was a bit too donkeyish and very unladylike. She didn’t even want to try and explain to Sheldon what a disco stick was. “Oh, that was _so_ good. But seriously, Sheldon, what power would you want?”

“The power to manipulate time would be incredibly useful, I suppose. That or teleportation.”

“Those are good ones. Would you get a batcave type lair? Drive a special Sheldon-mobile? Do that whole superhero thing?”

“Batman isn’t a superhero.”

“Pardon?”

Sheldon made his _I-can’t-believe-I’m-explaining-something-so-simple-to-you_ face and continued, “He has no superpowers. He’s just a wealthy man with access to technology that allows him to become a vigilante hero. If I had the capital to fund it and hand-to-hand combat training, I could be Batman now if I wanted to.”

She grinned and gave him a nod of approval. “Of course you could. We could be like Batman and uhh – the female version of Wolverine, I guess?”

This time he rolled his eyes and turned away from her to open up his laptop. “Now you’re just being silly. Batman is DC and Wolverine is Marvel. That crossover would never happen. Besides, you may have Wolverine’s powers, but you do not have adamantium fused to your bones.”

“Yet.”

His shoulders tensed up and Penny could tell he was doing his best to avoid giving her a lecture on even more comic book details that she was screwing up. So she steered the conversation somewhere else instead, “What happens now? I have this power for a reason, but I can’t exactly quit my job to become Infinity Girl or Miss Invincible or the Unbreakable Woman or whatever.”

He looked back at her with one eyebrow perked up and sighed softly. “The Unbreakable Woman?”

“I know. I know. The name thing needs work. But you have to admit that superhero-ing isn’t exactly a lucrative job, and I have rent to pay…”

“Superhero-ing isn’t even a real word.”

She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him, it was probably unbefitting of a superhero to act that way. “But, seriously, what am I going to do with this?”

“A lot of superheroes have day jobs. You could keep yours or –“ Sheldon paused and she could practically see the light bulb go off over his head, “You’ve always wanted to be in movies. You could become a stuntperson.”

Penny shrugged but didn’t dismiss it outright. In fact, it was definitely one of Sheldon’s better ideas. “That’s actually, well – maybe?”

“Now, back to what I was going to show you. I drew up some preliminary designs for a costume that would be both flattering and practical.”

Of course he had. _Of course._

*

It was fall of the same year when Sheldon knocked on her door one Sunday morning. She thought maybe he was bringing by her finished costume or he wanted to discuss more possibilities for her secret identity’s name, but when she opened the door he looked so pale she could almost see through him.

“Sheldon, what’s wrong? You look sick.”

“I woke up in bed this morning. But not my bed. I was next to Mrs. Vartabedian downstairs. In her bed.”

Penny took a step backwards, jaw dropping in shock. “I –but – Mrs. Vartabedian? I didn’t think you had a type, but isn’t she like eighty?”

“It’s not like _that_. Her room is directly below mine and I think, while I was sleeping, I just –“ He made a gesture with his hand pointing down like he was trying to pass it through something. “I think I can walk through walls.”

“No, no way.”

“Shut the door.”

She was still in shock but did as he asked and waited. A moment later, the sound of Sheldon hitting the door with the full force of his body made the walls rattle and Penny tried not to laugh too loudly.

“Hold on,” he shouted through the door, “I just need to learn how to control it.”

There was a long pause but she could hear him breathing in and out slowly on the other side of the wall. Finally, it happened. He walked directly through her front door as if it wasn’t even there. She took several steps back and clapped both hands over her mouth.

This was shaping up to be one hell of a year.


End file.
